The vendors' messages to partners indicate this will change next year.

It appears even EMC's Australian staff have been caught off-guard, with EMC Australia's chief technology marketing officer Clive Gold in November telling media the floods had not affected its supply of enterprise storage drives.

A spokesperson for Hitatchi Data Systems, the fourth largest storage supplier in the region, however said its component supplies had been affected.

Western Digital earlier this month restarted production at one of its Bangkok facilities but predicted shortages would continue well beyond March 2012.

WD and rival Seagate have estimated the industry only has the capacity to produce between 110 and 120 million hard drives in the December quarter, falling well short of the 170 million to 180 million units in demand by customers.

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